


Tally

by YSF



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: AU, Drabble, F/M, M/M, Sad, Tally marks au, Tumblr made me do it, love lines, not really a fic?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-21
Updated: 2014-12-21
Packaged: 2018-03-02 08:16:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 739
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2805770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YSF/pseuds/YSF
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU in which every time a person falls in love, a red line like a tally mark appears on their wrist/the tally mark turning black if the love is requited/the tally mark becoming a scar if the person they love dies.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tally

Inspired by [this post](http://stilinskiwhittemores.tumblr.com/post/99272386357) and awesome [QuinnAnderson](http://archiveofourown.org/works/719229).

 

Lydia likes short sleeves, being underestimated and getting her way. She has a ridiculously high IQ, lots of suitors and a single black line standing out on her delicate, pale wrist - matching Jackson's, their romance perfectly by the books, Grimm's fairytale style.

Lydia also likes heavy-duty water-proof concealer and has tally marks up to her elbow, all red.

And maybe she **can** do better than Jackson, thank you, Stiles, but at the very least he loves her **back**.

Why did **your** mark on her wrist never turn black, huh, Stiles?

 

 

Stiles likes lots of things, including comic books, long sleeved plaid shirts, Reese's and curly fries. He only loves Scott (like a brother!), his Dad, and his jeep. And Lydia Martin, the strawberry-blond Goddess. Derek, a little.

His wrists are bare, marked only by constellations of moles - and that bothers him more than still being a virgin at 17, and that scares him more than Peter.

 

 

Danny never really thought to hide his wrists - first tally mark appearing young enough to not matter, tan skin and dark clubs working well enough later on. He had a line on his wrist for Jackson long enough to get used to it, long enough for it to not be weird - being in love with his best friend. It's only an occasional pang of guilt and pain, manageable by now. It doesn't stop him from dating, it doesn't stop him from hoping - hoping for what, though, Danny doesn't know.

The tally mark turned black in their eighth grade. It still is.

 

 

Derek's wrist looks like an exemplary picture for self-harm: everyone he loved reduced to thin, straight scars, razor-sharp - by his own hand.

Sometimes he dreams of a new red mark blooming on his forearm and wakes up terrified. Sometimes he can't even look at Stiles during meetings, phantom itch of his wrists sending chills down his spine, stealing his breath.

Sometimes he tries to forget that his line for Kate stayed bright and perfect through the years, till the very end.

 

 

Boyd and Erica had matching black lines on their wrists, perfectly mirrored if holding hands. No one even knew when the marks appeared, and Erica never bragged, not about that, but even if marks never existed in the world, you could have seen the truth of it in their eyes just as easily.

They were put to rest with matching scars on thin fragile wrists, fairytale true-love-wake-up-kiss shittily limited to couples where one of them was still alive and hurting. 

No one liked to remember that.

 

 

Melissa will never say so, of course, but the most nerve-wrecking moments of her life were not connected to the supernatural horror show her life has become. 

It was the anxiety as she watched her love line for her (long-ex now) husband slowly go from black to red and seeing him come in through the door; it was the relief of watching the line fade into nothing when he was long gone. It was the disappointment of seeing a new red line on her wrist and knowing that a matching line on **his** wrist was a **scar** for his dead wife. It was waking up one day years later to see it turn black overnight and feel nothing but doubts; it was walking up to him and seeing the answer in his eyes before she could even find courage to ask: "I'm sorry, Melissa, no."

She was always strong, always there for Scott, through anything he and Stiles got themselves into, be it scraped knees or torn out throats, but her love lines were **just for her**.

Her alone.

 

 

The first time John got a glimpse of the new black tally mark on his wrist, he dropped his favorite coffee mug - he had a late shift and was still running late, Stiles at Scott's, he remembers that. He remembers thinking that panic attacks were not a hereditary condition, even though he spent a good few minutes on the wet floor among the pieces of porcelain trying to breath and reminding himself that his wife was, indeed, dead, her scar there and painfully faint, compared to all of the black. He thought: "What will you tell your son, John?", and whiskey could do nothing for the taste of guilt choking him.

He could never fault Melissa for her feelings, of course. But he sure as hell could fault himself.

 

 


End file.
